Community challenge #26: Resin (closed)

That’s a pretty cool idea! :slight_smile: Maybe on the next one.

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Looks good. How did you generate the map for the lake depths? It’s something that I want to try as well.

If you can find bathymetric data for the waterbody, otherwise tracing a fishing map works :slight_smile:

I’ve been using this for a week now and nearly forgot to submit it.

there is minimal resin, but it is present. and as a bonus I did start and finish this project this month so that’s a plus for me. I’d like to make more I think after some tweaking to the design/ code.

What I made:
A Rosewood Valet Tray with a friends sketch of a flower girl vcarved into it and back filled with pearlescent powder/resin. (next time I’d like to try brass powder and resin)

geometry was all done with the model tab in CC. I’ve been enjoying playing with it. and I used two dowels to be able to flip it. Which was good because I had a few failures along the way. first big one was a static buildup with the shopvac and ended up driving the bit eratically into the piece when I was nearly done…

I ended up changing the design a bit to try to fix it. unfortunately I wasnt able to stop it before it dove through and broke the inside of the dish. so there was a little hole.
image

I cut a few dowels from the same wood and attempted to fill the hole to hide it. came pretty close to matching the grain.

image

anyways more in progress shots



so, strategic placement of items inside and it’s back to “picture perfect”

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I have made several box tops with simple images and I think I like the simple better than all of the complicated ones. Very nice catchall tray.

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I made this as a wedding gift for one of my friends, I’m really happy with the way it turned out, seeing how many mistakes I made along the way and that it was my first actual project, other then cutting my name out of wood, and a few basic projects. (see the bottom for all the mistakes I made)

So this cutting board was a last minute gift idea I had. I had less then a week to do this and was scrambling right up until the last minute. I used my Shapeoko Pro and fusion 360 to design and cut the board. I made the board of of Walnut and Purple heart

This is a render of how the board and engraving would look. I was trying to decide whether or not to go with the bold font or the regular font, in the end I went with a hybrid, where I took the “T” and the “L” and combined it with the “ow” and the “er”. Originally I had wanted to put the name in the middle of the two strips of the purple heart, but was unable to as it would have looked really small. In the end I decided to not put it in the purple heart and rotate the board.

This is the only picture of the glue up that I have. This is when I was doing a surfacing pass to get the board flat before all the operations

This is the completed engraving before the resin pour, I decided to do the engraving before the full surface pass, that way I could poor the resin into the cavity and then come back and do the full surface pass all in one go, this would save me time in the long run, as I would have to do less clean up on the resin.


Poured resin, ended up going with a gold, kind of wishing I had done a purple resin.

Here I’m planning it down to its final height


Cut out the juice grove and adding a fillet to the edge

A little bit of sanding later and a quick wipe with water.

A lot of sanding later and some water, I let the board sit out in the sun to let the purple heat oxidize and deepen in color, its such a beautiful wood.

And the finished product, I used Walrus cutting board oil, and there wood wax to finish this, this is after 2 coats of oil and a layer of wax on the top.

Some of the mistakes I made:

This part pains me. I put in about 10 or 20 hours into the design and cam operations to make sure I could get it perfect on the first go. Because I was doing both side I used indexing pins and holes to align the board up. Those somewhat worked, when I did the drilling of the board and the waste board it worked perfectly, but when I flipped the board and did the operation again it some how got shifted to the side. When I did the cut out pass the sides did not line up properly, I ended up having to take a router to the sides and go over it to make them flush.

In the picture bellow you might be able to see a few different problems, the most obvious problem is the round over didn’t go all around the board and its not to its full depth. This was caused by me programing the tool incorrectly into fusion. The second problem is the the grove is not perfectly aligned, you can see a bump on the other side of the alignment hole. This, I think, was caused by the tool not being able to cut into some of the excess material, and prevent the machine from properly moving.

This mistakes saddens me the most, I had initially planed putting there name on both sides, but due to either setting the height of the surfacing pass properly, or not having the engraving go to the right depth the resin got wiped out.

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Nice project, Austin. The lessons learned, although painful, are growing pains - thanks for sharing.

I love cutting boards; they make wonderful gifts.

Does this challenge end tonight at midnight?

No, tomorrow at midnight.

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Okay just verifying. Due to the holidays and a couple of goofs I’m running down to the last second

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Arent we all. Santa works all the way until Christmas eve.

I made six boxes with an art-deco design for the sides and a topographic map box top for xmas presents (process detailed at that link). Each box used different colored resin for the sides, and the top is a topographic map of the town we live in.



Here are some of the things I learned during this project.

  • Using Polyurethane to seal the wood before adding resin is worth the time and effort, as it reduced the post pour bubbles in the resin. My understanding is this reduces the air that could be pulled out of the wood while the resin is hardening.
  • When they say “stir the resin for 5 minutes before pouring”, I don’t think that is suggesting it needs 5 minutes of (active) stirring. I think that is more of a suggestion to make sure the two parts are mixed, but wait 5 minutes before pouring. I noticed (in my small batches) that a lot of bubbles were created in the mixture around the 4 minute mark, but the bubbles being created in the mixture decreased after that.
  • I used a heat gun to help pop the bubbles, but DO NOT over heat the mixture. If it starts to create a foam, you’ve overheated the mixture and the results will be bad.
  • For my (limited) skills, it really improved results using the “Cut, Seal, (wait), Resin, (wait), Final Cut” method. In other words, use the Shapeoko to not only make the pockets for your resin, but use the Shapeoko to clean up the resin after it has hardened.
  • Using multiple cut-resin-cut cycles allows you to put in fine details without blowing out wood, but it of course really increases the time it takes to make something. (The really close roads in my design are an example of this).
  • The tops were much harder to make than the sides, yet I like the look of the sides more than the tops.
  • I think my resin would have ended with better final surface if I had done a final pass with an upcut bit rather than a downcut bit.

Files are on Cutrocket

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Thanks, going to try to redo it on some scrap pine that i have

Here’s my go at it. This started with @Julien and his Tips on making this wall light? project. I suggested a “pocket, pour, surface, flip and surface again” construction. It was an original lightbulb moment for me. Little did I know that this method is already in use by the cnc gurus around here. Would you call it simultaneous discovery or personal creative evolution? This was a proof-of-concept exercise that evolved into a challenge entry.
The process:

Pocket a “mold” in some wood, pour the epoxy, surface and dry-sand to 2000.



Rout a simple, deco-ish design in the resin.


Flip the piece and surface for the reveal. I was astonished that the idea became reality.


As a comparison test to the dry sanding, I wet-sanded to 2000 with an oil/wax blend. This might be the smoothest cedar resin-casting form in the southeast US, maybe the entire country.

At this point, the challenge was announced and I thought I might enter. I released the resin from captivity to use as a faceplate for a small box. I designed some box parts and milled them from 1/2" MDF. Just say no to the yellow MDF (it should be called something much worse, which I did several times throughout the process). It’s the worst combination of dust, fuzzies and tumbleweeds.

Assemble the box (glue and pin nails).

Sample some metallic finishes. At first, I was looking for a deco-style, smooth, brassy finish. But, I went with the one on the right and decided to leave it rough, like an unpolished gold casting.

Finish the box and install the resin faceplate.

When I show the wife, she says, “It looks like a candle box.”

I say, “It could be a countertop mail caddy.”

So, since she’s always right… it’s a candle box, now at home on the patio table, poolside.

There were many firsts for me on the project. Here are a few:

  • challenge entry
  • epoxy casting
  • two-sided machining
  • intentionally machining a material other than wood
  • milling parts made to fit together
  • “OMG! That static business is for real, when cutting epoxy resin, plastic, foam, etc…”

Plenty of room for improvement, but I am happy with the result and learned so much along the way. Thanks to the community moderators and all of the entrants and community users for the inspiration and guidance!

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Thank you all for all the entries ! Lots of different approaches to the challenge theme here.
I will create the voting thread soon.

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I unfortunately couldn’t get mine done in time but I’ll be sure to vote and post what I made separately to at least share it!

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This was a fine crop of entries. Congratulations to everyone that entered. I really liked them all.

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I know I’m late but just wanna post my work for you guys to see.


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Great job on the epoxy, really like the way the coloring turned out!

That is insanely beautiful!